Usability testing and onboarding for SF Kids Play

2017

As part of my work at the digital agency River, SF Studios needed help researching the usability of their streaming app. The work started as a user research project and quickly grew to a project of re-designing the application to tie into into the results of the tests.

As the UX designer in this project, I was involved in all part from testing the application, including finding, recruiting and facilitate the tests, analyzing the results, sketching on solution to final design. Ultimately this was a group effort from the Experience Design team at River.

As the client saw a decrease in user numbers due to competitors in the business growing stronger, we concluded that creating a strong UX could be a competitive advantage in the market.

The usability test for the application included recruitment of test participants and setting up the test. In the end, we came up with suggestions and sketches to how the design and user flows could be improved and in the end the scope of the work was expanded to create final design for an updated version of the SF Kids Play app. 

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Usability testing

During two days we conducted a set of qualitative individual user tests to eval-uate the usability and the design of functions in SF Kids Play.

The more complicated functions in the app is directed to parents. This led us to develop a persona and test parents of young children who was new to the app.

We chose to test five participants, based on the guidelines from the Nielsen Norman Group regarding problems found versus number of test users. The main purpose was to investigate how the participants went about finding streaming services for their kids, and to evaluate the onboarding process as well the efficiency and clarity of a range of functions within the SF Kids Play application.

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Based on statistics from NNGroup, 5 participants is enough to get enough findings in relation to to cost and time of a usability test.

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Old design

The conclusion I drew from the tests was that the original design had some shortcomings. Mainly regarding the onboarding - that had too much copy - and later later led to difficulties using the functions, as the user skipped the onboarding slides and thus didn’t catch the information. Another thing we mapped was the user behavior and the context which the app was used in. For example, we found out how the app was frequently used as a kind of pacifier in car rides and in restaurants. This made it important to make it easy for the parents to just press play and not having to setup any cumbersome settings etc. 

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App onboarding 

The onboarding screens was the first thing I updated based on what we found in the tests. We made it more inspiring, cleaned up the UI and wrote more condensed instructions. 

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Step 1: Core functions 

The first screen of the onboarding shows the value proposition, core functions and the benefits of downloading content. A split screen with a kid using an iPad with SF Kids Play showing the download function when bringing the app for a car ride or just staying at home and using Chromecast of Apple TV to watch movies and series on the TV. 

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Step 2: Safe for your child. 

Features and settings that make this app unique are highlighted in the third step. 

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Step 3: Kid or parent? 

Explaining the difference between the parent ABC mode and the kids’ Bollhavet. Also showing that you can create a preset for what the start page should be. 

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Step 4: Content and key features 

A key proposition of the app is the content, therefore we want to remind the newly-joined users of the great titles in the catalogue. 

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Content & settings 

Another part that was updated was the design and UX for the core functions, namely finding and watching the movies and shows. Lastly we updated the Settings to contain all things related to it, as this was spread out throughout the app prior to the update. 

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Settings 

All parameters on one screen, to be found on the parents section. 

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Clearer icons 

Changed icons so that they are more relevant and connected to the content. Adding labels would also make the visuals more clear for the parents. 

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Clearer instructions and copy 

Clearer headlines and tool tips on would make it easier for the user to understand what content the card contains. 

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Favoriter. 

One section to find what characters the user have marked as favorites. 

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Spellista. 

One section to find the episodes added to the playlist also displays the duration of the playlist. 

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New settings content 

To be more consistent to the growing amount of functions and content, the settings menu is rearranged and it should display who’s logged in.